French Bass full restoration

[Matthew Tucker]

A bit of progress with cleating the top. There are many ways of doing this, but I prefer long diamond cleats because they make most sense to me; maximum glue contact and flexibility and offset grain. They are a bit tricky to trim without nicking the top, but I've done enough now to be able to do it fairly quickly.



Very sharp blade essential!



Some more trimming will be done before I'm happy. Although this is work that only the angels will get to see I like to make sure it's done neatly.




I might add a few more cleats later or some linen strips depending on how I feel.



Here for comparison:



And here's a video of how i do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOayNxDvuPM